Beside the Golden Door: Policy, Politics and the Homeless

More than a housing issue, the nature and complexity of
homelessness can be more fully appreciated by examining the
political economy of the state and decisions made regarding
resource distribution. Close connections are apparent
among global economic changes, poverty, unemployment,
welfare and housing policy, and homelessness. While
government housing policies emphasize privatization and tax
subsidies for middle- and upper-income home owners, the
reality for low-income groups is an acute shortage of
low-rent public housing, a severely depleted inventory of
private rental units, and reduced shelter options. Most of
the material in the present volume has been published
previously. Beside the Golden Door updates Wright's
Address Unknown: The Homeless in America. (1989) and
the evolution of homelessness in the United States through
the mid-1990s.

One of the book's principal arguments is that homelessness
has grown in recent years because poverty rates have
increased - along with decreases in welfare payments and
real minimum wages - at the same time as the supply of
low-income housing diminished. The authors refute the
assertion by Baum and Burnes, A Nation in Denial: The
Truth about Homelessness (1993), that homelessness is
the result of personal disabilities of the individuals
affected, principally ADM disorders (alcohol, drug, and
mental illness). Wright et al. demonstrate that, while
many, perhaps most, homeless people are affected by mental
illness or substance abuse, these factors alone do not
provide a causal explanation of the rise of homelessness.
Poverty and housing trends have created a situation which
inevitably means that many people will be without shelter;
personal factors such as mental illness or substance abuse
help to predict who are those most likely to be affected.
It comes as no surprise that those on the streets are drawn
largely from the pool of marginalized people most at risk;
this does not, however, provide an explanation of causal
factors. The authors make a convincing case that "blaming
the victim" diverts attention from the key issues of
housing, poverty, welfare, and pubic policy. Moreover, they
emphasize that treatment for ADM disorders are ineffective,
focussing on symptoms rather than on underlying structural
problems, and do not bring about lasting improvements.

Beside the Golden Door explores the issues and
difficulties involved in attempts to count the homeless,
which has been an obsessive exercise in the United States.
They detail the ill-fated censuses in 1990: these S-night
manouvres failed to identify from one-third to four-fifths
of decoys placed in the cities, they missed a substantial
number of informal shelters, they were confined to only
limited districts of the cities, and they could not account
for those individuals who intentionally avoided the
intrusive census, which had been announced in advance.

Wright has been involved with health issues for a very long
time, was the principal investigator of the Health Clinics
for the Homeless clinics in American cities, and has
written extensively on the subject (Wright and Weber, 1987,
Homelessness and Health. Washington, DC:McGraw
Hill). Consequently, this collection of papers, essays, and
speeches is most effective in describing the health issues
associated with homelessness, including mental illness and
substance abuse, the shortcomings of alcohol and drug
treatments, and the muddled situation in which poor health
is both a cause and a result of life on the street. The
final two chapters before the Conclusion, dealing with
rural homelessness and the situation overseas (Europe and
Honduras) are less effective and somewhat disconnected from
the flow of the remainder of the collection, which is
focussed exclusively on the United States.

Nevertheless, this collection is useful for general readers
and interested students who seek an explanation of the
phenomenon of homelessness, a review of the main theories
and arguments surrounding this issue, and, in particular,
the close ties between life on the street and poor
health.